Here's one issue--Word 2007 creates docs in the new file format by
default, .docx. Word 2004 can only open those if you install the beta
converter, but Pages can open them. To eliminate that as an issue, use
Save As in Word 2007 to save the files as .doc (Word 97-2004 format), or
do all your testing with docs created in Word 97. The rest of it still
sounds like a server/network issue.
Hopefully a networking expert will be along. I've got no clue about the
rest of it. Some questions to help them diagnose:
You open a Word doc on the mac. You type into it. You hit Save. What
dialogs, error messages, etc, do you get? (Does it open as read-only?
Are you editing the document actually on the server/PC? If you copy the
document from the PC/server to the Mac, edit it, save, and copy it back,
does that work?)
What file extension does the "back up document" have? Where does Word
try to save it, in the same file as the original or somewhere else?
Wild guess--a Word document can open with "just characters" sometimes if
you use File | Open and the Open dropdown in the dialog is set to
Recover File from Any Text. Any chance that is happening?
OK. The PC and the Mac have access to the same wireless router. I can
access the PC as a server from the Mac through the wireless router and open
documents on the PC from the Mac. I set up two test documents on the PC, one
in Word 97, and one in Office Word 2007. The Word 97 documents will open
with Office Word for Mac, the Word 2007 documents will not but will open with
Pages which is a Mac word processing program. The problem is that when I
type anything into the open documents on either and try to save the to the
PC, all I accomplish is creating a back up document, not a change to the
original. When opened, the backup is just characters. What I am trying to
do is edit documents on the PC from the Mac and save the changes on the PC.
It is not working.
:
[cross-posting to the MacWord group for Mac input--be sure to reply to
*this* message at first so that information reaches both sets of experts]
This is not a compatibility problem between MacWord and WinWord
though--files from each can be opened and saved in both programs. Sounds
like an issue with your network.
Actually, your question doesn't make much sense to me--hard to picture
what's going on. Can you describe your wireless network a bit? and say
what you do, what you expect to happen, and be more specific about what
happens instead? What does "saves it to a backup document" mean?
Zinger wrote:
On my wireless network, I can access my windows word documents from my mac,
but when I try to save the changes on the PC, it saves it to a backup
document. I have Office 2007 on the PC and Office for Mac (2004) on the Mac.
Is this compatibility problem solveable?